‒In the program that was broadcast, the audio over the scene where J.J. produces a gun is different to the audio on the raw footage from that day,” said Gavin Hill, who produced and directed the eight (now) six (uh, now) seven eight-part mini-series. ‒When it comes to that particular scene the audio was, in my opinion, faked.”

Big Trouble in Thailand creator Gavin Hill

‒The audible reaction of the marines to J.J. with the gun is not genuine,” Hill said.

The audio swap is just one of many liberties with the truth Hill claims Vera has taken with a series that has enraged Thai officials and he’s taken to the Web to make his case that it’s not only not his fault, but that it was not his intent. On Internet message boards, blogs and in e-mail he is complaining far and wide that Vera broke earlier agreements, has froze him out of the editing and now is now threatening a lawsuit to silence him.

‒The edit taking place in London has been described (publicly) as ‘overly creative,’ and that’s by the executive producer,” Hill said. ‒It’s coming down to bashing the shows out as quickly as possible and we’re seeing the result.”

‘Creative Editing’

Among the many ‒creative” changes to the truth were falsely implying a woman who fell off her hotel

balcony was raped, intentionally mislabeling Pattaya’s foreign tourist police assistants are regular officers, showing nude dancing inside a Pattaya go-go bar despite a written agreement not to and ‒racist blurring,” or blurring the faces of foreigners who didn’t sign a release form but not Thais.

‒You’d have thought after the BBC/RDF ‒Queengate” affair that production companies and broadcasters would have cleaned up their act,” Hill said, adding he plans to lodge a complaint with Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulatory body. ‒I’m not sure if I will be the first producer to complain about his own TV series.”

With some of what’s been shown in the first five

episodes, Hill may have grounds for his complaint. Ofcom’s rules on ‒Harm and Offense” state that ‒factual programmes or items or portrayal of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience” and that ‒that views and facts must not be misrepresented.”

Hill said even the series’ opening monologue stating that 288 Britons were ‒killed’in Thailand last year break those rules. So does purposefully giving police volunteers the wrong title, as was done in Episode 5 with Pattaya Foreign Tourist Police Assistant Howard Miller.

In an Aug. 18 e-mail to Carrie Fletcher, head of production at Vera, Hill reiterated that Miller and other foreigners were only volunteers, not full police, and urged Vera to label them truthfully. Fletcher’s reply, the same day, vowed the company would.

‒The Thais are being slightly pedantic about misrepresenting the Brits as being actual ‘police,’ but if that is what they want then we are not in a position to argue if it might cause repercussions,” she said.

But with Hill now frozen out of the editing discussion, BTIT Executive Producer Dean Palmer changed it back the way he originally wanted.

Implied Rape

It’s a small point that even Hill admits Ofcom won’t really care much about. But they might be more interested in Episode 5′s story about a drunken Full Moon Party-goer supposedly raped after falling off her balcony when, in fact, she wasn’t.

As the woman is being transported to the hospital, the show cuts to Tourist Police Volunteer Louise Rawlings telling about another drunk woman who was, in fact, raped in her hotel after a Full Moon Party -- a year beforehand. The original edit of the show, Hill said, made it impossible to know who Rawlings was talking about.

‒I was asked to sign off on Vera Productions’ attempt to fabricate a storyline. There was no suggestion whatsoever she’d been raped on the raw material (of which I have copies) sent back to Vera for editing,” Hill said. ‒Vera then go further by editing in an interview I conducted with Louise who talks about an Australian who was raped, although the rapist was convicted and sentenced to ten years.”

‒I was horrified and protested,” he added. ‒As a result, they were forced to abort this attempt at falsification but still manage to get the facts wrong about the Australian girl not pressing charges. She did, helped by her father, and the man got ten years.”

For its part, Vera and Virgin Media are withholding comment on Hill’s claims. But even some media professionals who know Hill think he may be blowing the seriousness of what is, in the end, a very minor television show, way out of proportion and that the changes are not really that substantive.

“Yes, he is in dispute with the production company and I don’t think he should have let it get that far to be honest,” one colleage involved in some of the Thailand shooting said in an e-mail this week. “Even though they did screw around with the edit there were no serious breaches which would lead a viewer to the wrong conclusion.”

‒This kind of thing goes on all the time,” former BBC sound editor and Thailand blogger Richard Barrow wrote on his Paknan Web Forum. ‒I agree it is not good to dramatize something that could lead to an arrest. But then, at the same time, the Thai police shouldn’t have jumped the gun to arrest J.J. without checking the evidence.”

For Hill, however, it’s a matter of integrity, particularly when in cases, such as he did with Shane Wheatley, the former owner of New Living Dolls One, he promised that, if he were allowed to film dancers in the Walking Street go-go that no nudity would be televised, as it was in Episode 5. (See the 6:44 mark in the video below.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3Omd883rU0

As I speculated earlier, the women shown have found out they were on the Boob Tube and are not pleased.

It’s also why Hill is making well known that someoneuploaded the raw, uncut video of the gun scene involving jet-ski vendor Winai to YouTube. While Vera reportedly is threatening copyright and breach of contract lawsuits, it arguably gives Winai legal grounds for not only exoneration, but a criminal libel and defamation case against Vera.

‒Vera doesn’t like the release of any footage which shows how they doctored sound which contributed to a man’s arrest and imprisonment,” Hill said. ‒Now, whoever uploaded that video to You Tube did so in the public interest because I would imagine who ever did believes in professionalism, balance and fairness; and that factual entertainment shouldn’t be at the expense of factual accuracy. I would imagine they also believe that their credibility and that of the series is compromised by factual inaccuracy, attempts at fabrication, misleading information and the unnecessary dramatization of very real events.”

In a darkened editing suite in London, the final six episodes of ‒Big Trouble in Thailand” are slowly being pieced together. But the remainder of the reality miniseries that finally airs on the U.K.’s Bravo cable channel likely won’t be what creator Gavin Hill expected. Some might argue it never has been.

In truth, nothing about the eight-part series about Thai police and badly behaving Brits has gone according to plans, not Hill’s and certainly not those of the Thai bigwigs who months ago happily mugged with him for snapshots. The edited product is not the ‒Thai Cops” Hill claims he wanted to make and now Thai officials have gone into full witch-hunt mode, demonizing him, downplaying their involvement and doing all they can go discredit the show and bury the problems it highlighted.

Even officials in Pattaya, which so far has gotten off lightly, are promising that ‒heads will roll” after seeing a rough cut of Episode 3.

But should any what has unfolded over the past 11 days really have come as a surprise? Thais were never going to tolerate even remotely negative Western media coverage. And Hill’s own assertions that he never expected the reaction Episode 1 generated begs the question of not only how much he really understands Thailand, but whether he realized how little control over his pet project he really had.

‒I certainly regret any offense caused to the Thai authorities,” Hill told me in an interview this week. ‒Any offense caused was certainly not deliberate, although now -- with hindsight and having learned a lot -- I can see why it may have happened.”

Not Your Father’s ‘Cops’

It’s not hard to see why Thai police officials feel betrayed. They were pitched a spinoff of U.S. reality hit ‒Cops,” which follows officers on the beat, portrays them duly upholding the law and spending little time getting into the personal lives of the people they arrest. What they got was something totally different: a series that blatantly infers cops are crooked and that the justice system is not only slow, but only works for people with enough cash to pay their way out of trouble.

That type of thing simply isn’t done. There is no free press in Thailand. There’s not even free blogging, as was made painfully clear to me when I had my own blog and suffered physical attacks and death threats for writing the ‒truth.” How could Hill possibly think he could put out a show that pounds home the ‒truth” that Thai cops are corrupt? Or, for that matter, why did he think he could -- as he does in Monday’s Episode 3 -- criticize Thai authorities for letting a well-known con-man live in Pattaya simply by paying off law enforcement?

‒To think I could have made a western-style ‒Cops” series in Thailand … well, I must have been bonkers,” Hill wrote in a comment on my first ‒Big Trouble” story here. ‒I can’t begin to tell you what a challenge it was making this series for someone especially concerned -- to the point of going out of his way -- of not harming Thailand’s image.”

His claims of good intent don’t mesh with the final product, which definitely strays from the ‒Cops” model by delving deep into the lives of victims (and criminals), trying to put a heart-wrenching spin on their lives rather than simply focusing on law enforcement patrols as ‒Cops” does. That Hill maintains he was making ‒Thai Cops” makes you wonder if Bravo and Vera Productions, the film company partner that is editing the series, had their own ideas what the show should be.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWmv9o_14rE

‒I wasn’t making a probing, investigative documentary series designed to expose anything,” Hill said. ‒That was not the remit.  I was making a pro-police observational documentary series for a youthful demographic on a niche UK cable TV channel.

‒I haven’t been responsible for putting the show together in London,” Hill added. ‒I am interested in playing more of a role in that respect, in the future … if that’s possible.”

The Crackdown Begins

Earlier this week, the future, however, seemed somewhat in doubt. Hill told the Phuket Wan newspaper Sept. 14 that the Thailand Film Office sent a letter to Bravo asking that future episodes be canceled.

”I don’t know what’s going to happen now with the series,” he said. The Thailand Film Office has ”pulled all the releases and permissions that are required to complete the series.”

He has been told there is the likelihood of a complaint being made to the British embassy. At least one volunteer expat tourist policeman in Pattaya had also expressed concern.

In an interview with friend and freelance British journalist Andrew Drummond, Hill went further, saying he was not only being singled out by the Thais, but ostracized by his U.K. partners as well.

Meanwhile producer Gavin Hill, who was working for comedian Rory Bremner’s Vera Productions, said: ‒At the moment our relationship has come to an end.  They have not given any support. They are also not honouring some promises I made to the Thai authorities or corrections I am making to the scripts.

‒They appear to have left me out to dry. The Thai authorities are trying to get the series stopped.  But actually if they look at it closely they come off quite well.  We were primarily looking at British tourists on holiday.

Today Hill is backing down a bit from those claims, which some might contend he made  to sound like a victim, not a perpetrator. It could be his published comments upset those still working with his raw footage or Bravo, which finds itself with an unexpected hit. Episode 1 was seen by 113,000 people on TV. That’s not much for a country of 60 million, but more than the 95,000 Bravo was expecting. Many tens of thousands watched YouTube and pirated copies downloaded from the Internet.

‒I have to be honest with you, I don’t know what is happening with regards to the Thai government, police and future episodes of the show… really,” he said in his interview with me. ‒This is because the Thai government, as such, has made no contact with me. I really don’t know what they think at the very top about the series.  I only know what I read and, if the Bangkok Post article is anything to go by, then I assume the government views the series negatively. But that’s only an assumption on my part.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhuXUdBmej8

Hill was referring to a Sept. 16 Bangkok Post piece claiming police were ‒furious” over scenes in Episode 1 they claimed were ‒staged” to show jet ski vendor Vinai ‒J.J.” Naiman threatening British Royal Marines with a gun in order to extort 34,000 baht from them for damage they supposedly didn’t cause to one of his watercraft.

Phuket authorities quickly arrested Vinai after the show aired Sept. 7 with Phuket’s governor winning plaudits for finally clamping down on Patong Beach’s infamous jet ski scam artists. But the governor seemed to be alone in taking a pro-active response to the negatives ‒Big Trouble” brings up. Everyone else in government seems to prefer denying, discrediting and covering up, with the governor and police now even cooking up anti-Thai conspiracy theories.

Pol. Lt. Gen. Santhan Chayanont, chief of Provincial Police Region 8 which covers the upper South, yesterday said efforts to tarnish Thailand’s image might be coordinated. …

In the clip of the British marine, Mr. Vinai was seen to go to a storeroom and return with a gun which he dangled by his side. Santhan said the way clips had been made suggested a set up.

They had been edited to tarnish the image of both Thai tourism and the police force and presented only the negative side of the story through narrators, he said.

Santhan ordered police investigators to find out if any Thai individuals were involved in the making of the footage. They could face criminal charges. He also ordered his subordinates to run a check on the production of the clips and report the findings to him as soon as possible. …

Phuket governor Wichai Praisa-ngob yesterday said the clips might have been produced by someone who stood to benefit from Thailand tourism losing its competitive edge.

Criminal Charges

Santhan’s probe has moved quickly, with the Post today publishing news that Thai video-production house hired to work with Hill now facing criminal charges.

Wanasiri Morakul, director of the Thailand Film Office which comes under the Tourism and Sports Ministry, yesterday said police had traced the tapes to a company called Black Sheep Productions.

She said the managers of the company, which had produced the ‒Big Trouble in Thailand” series for Bravo All News station in England, admitted to holding the copyright for the recordings.

Ms. Wanasiri said normal videos made by Thais do not require prior approval from the ministry’s Office of Tourism Development. But the people responsible for the Big Trouble In Thailand series … had violated Article 34 of the motion picture law by not having the contents examined by a Tourism and Sports Ministry film committee before they were broadcast abroad.

The company’s managers could face 12 months in jail and/or a fine of up to a million baht.

Seksan Nakawong, director-general of the Office of Tourism Development, said the film-makers also violated Article 23 of the same law for making a film tarnishing the reputation of Thailand. …

Sasisupa Sungvaribud, president of the Film Production Services Association, said the recordings took the form of a reality show and the events depicted were obviously staged and scripts written for the film.

Hill, of course, has strenuously and repeatedly denied the jet ski scene was ‒staged,” although debate here and here show the definition of ‒staged” varies based on who you talk to. TFS2M’s SideShowBob may have summed the incident best here.

My initial point I never made is I highly doubt that jet ski situation would have gone down the way it was setup to be. And I mean set up. Usually when any of the military guys get in scraps the military police or attaches will call in the local military for aid.

I know some guys who are the liaisons for these situations, so before they have problems usually they go in heavy and the locals back down. So in this case had it been handled properly, not setup for a ‒show,” J.J. would have been forced to talk to Thai military guys.

Tell me how that would have turned out: Chances are, since the kid lied, J.J. would have been put down gently and the military guys would have skated off Scot-free.

So, in that scenario, the Thais are getting screwed due to the close relationship of the two militaries.

Gavin Hill and his team on the scene during filming of Big Trouble in Thailand.

Hill, however, sticks to his guns in my interview with him:

All I can repeat is that the scene with J.J. was not staged in any way;  not by me or anyone connected with the series. J.J. invited us to film a case and that case panned out the way it did with me filming all the while.  J.J. could have chosen any case to show us.

‒I gave him an opportunity, a platform to tell his side of the story because there are always two sides to a story. That’s what I do: tell them as best I can.  J.J. did his thing. The Marines did theirs.  And I did mine. But my only role was to turn up and record what happened.  And what happened was as much a surprise to me as I think it has been to everyone.  Only I was there and witnessed it first-hand, which was unnerving at times.

‒People keep asking why would JJ behave like that?  Well, I think the reasons is pretty obvious: Why do many of us most often behave in ways we later regret?  It ain’t rocket science and the evidence is there if you notice.

Clearly, jet skis are a real problem for Thailand’s tourist areas -- Phuket, Samui (next on Hill’s hit list) and even Pattaya. The week before the British soldiers got swindled, Vinai took U.S. Marines for 70,000 baht. And, on Koh Samui, soon to be highlighted in the series, a Swedish couple had to be escorted to the airport after their lives were threatened by a jet ski vendor there.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gamMhnultLs

Even in today’s Bangkok Post article Tourist Police Chief Adis Ngamjitsuksri ‒conceded the extortion of tourists was a problem which the police alone could not stamp out.” And more meetings were being planned in Phuket today to radically change the rental system there and impose an insurance scheme and much lower penalties for damage, as well as removing requirements tourists give their passports to vendors as collateral.

Episode 3: Pattaya Spotlighted

There’s also evidence to support that Episode 3 upcoming Monday -- in which Pattaya will for the first time dominate the screen — has already had a positive effect.

Alleged Hyperfinance con-man Lance Shaw

Immigration police on Tuesday arrested 64-year-old Lance Frederick Shaw, an alleged Australian con man who supposedly cheated people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a gold-investment scam and other fraudulent ventures for more than 25 years. Episode 3 originally criticized Pattaya police for ignoring the complaints of defrauded investors and allowed him to live peacefully in Sin City by paying large bribes.

The episode that airs Monday now will show the arrest but not necessarily less criticism of the Pattaya authorities.

Hill told me today that Pattaya Police, which saw a rough cut of Monday’s episode, have promised ‒heads will roll” and that another investigation into Big Trouble’s makers will be launched.

Monday’s show also has a Pattaya jailhouse interview with Marcus Hilton (aka Marcus James) from the U.K. and Australia who was facing a possible death sentence. Also featured in Pattaya are a British bloke having a dispute with a very persistent bar girl who literally gives him a run for his money and a Kosovan man with a U.K. passport who gets a good beating from Pattaya cops after offending them in some way.

It will be interesting to see if the ruckus over ‒Big Trouble” will result in Vera and Bravo watering down the show or, as some alluded to earlier this week, making it more vanilla and palatable to Thai tourism authorities. Hill doubts it.

‒I’m not sure how anything could be watered down. The content we’ve gathered is the content we’ve gathered,” he told me. ‒I can’t see anything more coming up that would upset anyone in the way it has. But then I didn’t expect the reaction to the first episode.”

Face off in Phuket between British Royal Marine Police Sgt. Tim Wright and jet ski vendor J.J. (Photo: Andrew Chant)

It nearly derailed Banglamung’s epic yesterday and is basically all that people with an interest in Thailand want to talk about. SideshowBob thinks it’s crap. Others claim it’s staged, I personally think it’s pretty precise, but, no matter how you see it, Big Trouble in Thailand is definitely sparking a lot of discussion and debate.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days, Big Trouble is the latest production from British producer/director Gavin Hill (APTV, Al Jezzera & various U.S. television outlets) and comedian Rory Bremner’s Vera Productions for Bravo Channel and filmed with the cooperation of the Thailand Tourist Police. The first episode aired Monday, with seven more weekly episodes to come.

The program tracks the travails of British tourists in both Phuket, Samui and Pattaya, with holidaymakers getting in trouble mostly with drink and drugs, but of course some sex, guns and rock-and-roll thrown in. Episode 1 spotlighted a skint young woman at a Koh Phangan Full Moon Party, who got caught with her boyfriend’s ganja and gets locked up; some British Royal Marines who ignore good advice and rent a jet ski in Phuket only to get ripped off, and (closer to home) the squad of Pattaya foreign police tourist assistants led by Pattaya One News boss and anchor Howard Miller.

Even before the show aired, it incited polarized debate from people claiming it will do everything from ruining British tourism to Thailand to those who think it’s an valuable, sobering lesson to young, thrill-seeking holidaymakers. Being that it had the blessing of the cops, you figure it’s not going to be too damaging to Thailand. I think England’s The Guardian probably has it closest to right, advising people not to take it too seriously:

Big Trouble in Tourist Thailand is about silly Brits who get into trouble in paradise, and end up in prison or paying enormous sums of money to stay out of prison. And all because they smoked a spliff or crashed a jet ski, or didn’t crash a jetski but the jetski man said they crashed a jet ski and now he’s got his heavies in. Awful for the people involved, obviously. But quite entertaining for us -- so much more so than those Wish You Were Here-style travel shows. Who cares about people having a nice time?

Others rightly point out the people being highlighted largely have only themselves to blame. Take Mike at Asia Travel Guide Blog, for example:

We often hear of reports how the police are corrupt in Thailand, but in most cases the foreigners involved in the incidents were drunk and out of control and pretty much all of their own doing. The warnings for drug use in Thailand are pretty clear.

Or Billy at Bangkok Diaries

On one level it does seem somewhat sensationalized which is to be expected of anything you watch on television but on another level this stuff does happen. The jetski rental guys are crooks. Dumb ass tourists take drugs in Thailand despite the ample warnings everywhere. Idiot drunks get themselves in trouble and get the crap kicked out of them by locals. So on that level, all of this stuff happens. The big question is whether it happens as frequently as portrayed in the program.

Or this from Brit freelance tabloid journalist Andrew Drummond.

What is amazing is that nobody ever gets it.  The same mistakes happen year in year out. Why do people bother going to ‘Full Moon Parties’ on Koh Phangan?  I gave up 18 years ago!  Here in this series we see how rapes, muggings, druggings and of course arrests occur, every time, not forgetting the drownings and occasional murder. And if you get thrown out of a brothel  for being drunk, why report it to police? It’s amazing how drink begets moral outrage.

That’s certainly not to say the show isn’t sensationalistic and -- even though the title is ‒trouble” in Thailand -- a bit too negative. Even Drummond, a longtime pal of director Hill, admits his mate pulls a few punches and massages some into over-the-top performances.

There are Pattaya bar girls chasing, now well-outnumbered foreigners down the street shouting ‘You. You. Give me money;’  then the drunken Australian being thrown very roughly out of a brothel. ‒They stomped my head in,” he wails then lunges at Howard.  Then Howard is seen politely asking his father on the boy’s phone to come and collect him, all the while being called a ‘dickhead’ by the son. Gormless foreigners being led by their penises into oblivion.

There are of course lots and lots of drunks actually, and the British seem to score high here, later happily signing their film release forms, I guess as if signing for a medal. There is also titillation as skimpily dressed go-go girls frolic around poles in Pattaya bars. Well that is how it is,  so don’t whinge about it to me.

This is not a film series about fancy spas and lush jungle resorts and so called Hi-So launch parties with twee people.  One can get that sort of  fur coat-and-no knickers production on ‘Destination zzzz Thailand zzzzzz’. But this is still the real stuff that even high rolling tourists must find difficult to avoid.

ssB will chime in early that he thinks it’s fake, but the Pattaya coverage, although hammed up a bit for the camera, seems pretty true-to-life from my years of strolling Walking Street. Miller and I actually chatted by phone just last week and although he takes endless heaps of shit from people who don’t know him and would never do one, let alone both, jobs he does, I think he puts the interests of tourists first. Sure, he even admits Episode 1 is largely about him, but only because he’s been involved with the project for two years.

‒it’s not really an expose of the Tourist Police; more a look at the way foreigners controversially assist them around Thailand,” Miller wrote Aug. 25 on the Pattaya Secrets message board. ‒It is a fast-paced show which will actually promote the sex industry here in Thailand, but will also show some of the consequences of it. It is not done in a seedy way (no hidden cameras in bars and girls with their tits out). It is done in a “funky” way aimed at the audience of Bravo who are predominately men aged between 18 and 35.

I think most people will like it. Some are concerned it is another nail in the coffin for Pattaya. I think many will be surprised how the program pans out over the weeks it is on.

Gruppenfuhrer Howard Miller is a lot more relaxed in Pattaya's walking street in a Home Guard sort of way. (Photo: Andrew Chant)

One surprising thing that has already come out of it is the reaction law enforcement in Phuket has taken. A big chunk of the show is devoted to ‒J.J.” a farnag-looking Thai Mafioso who rips off one British Marine for 35,000 for some small, older damage to a jet ski. The program insinuates J.J. is just one of many thieves scamming tourists on jet skies and, based on what I know of Pattaya, the program would be right. I’ve been told by some very senior guys around town never to rent a jet ski at random; only through a personal friend. Otherwise, you’re ripe for rip-off.

Today Phuket authorities arrested J.J., better known as 28-year-old Winai Naiman. Using only the documentary as evidence police have locked him up without bail for scamming and threatening at gunpoint the young marines.

I’m thinking J.J. now rues the day he signed that release form and played up his gangster side. There are allegations he was paid to set up the scene, but Hill calls those claims ‒hardly credible.”

Big Trouble in Thailand director / producer Gavin Hill

‒We had to cut a lot of the footage. I am satisfied that what was presented was the absolutely correct portrayal of the situation,” he told Drummond.  I have not taken any side.”

Meanwhile, Phuket’s Governor, Wichai Praisa-nob, has been urged by the Deputy Prime Minister and senior diplomats from Australia and Britain to crack down on the scams.

According to Phuket Wan:

The governor, who went to the police station in Patong before attending a summit on the jet-ski issue, rejected an appeal from Mr Naiman’s family for bail. He said that although the weapon involved was a BB gun, intimidation of the kind shown on television was unacceptable.

”Jet-skis are allowed to operate as a sport in Patong, not as a business,” he said. ”Unless this kind of activity stops, we will ban them all.”

Drummond says his buddy Hill plans to expose more jet ski scams on Koh Samui in future episodes and that the director is a little surprised at the reaction to just the first show.

This was not designed to be an investigative programme. We just filmed what was going on in front of us.” He said however the next programme in the series probably reflected more on bad British behavior than that of Thais.

‒I am a little surprised at the big reaction now. This seems to have been going on for a long time.”

Pattaya’s Miller also said J.J.’s arrest proves the show’s ‒value,” and too dismissed claims scenes were faked.

‒Some people are suggesting certain cases were staged and scripted and pre-planned. Bottom line is they weren’t,” he wrote today on Pattaya Secrets. ‒It is all real stuff and as they say ‘reality hurts,’ which I think is why some are trying to question the ‘reality’ part of the show as they don’t want people to see this side of Thailand.”

If you’re into downloading torrents, you can grab the full first episode here.

Full Moon Day 2

Well. What can be said about Day 3 after dealing with Day 2. Not much, but the BJ lessons might be worth noting but not right now. Day 3 was pretty much uneventful. We slept in, ran to grab the breakfast before the buffet shut down and then went back to bed. Then we got up and hung around the pool.I guess the trouble started when we decided to have a bottle of wine by the pool in the late afternoon. All good but then things got a little frisky around the pool. U see the euro girls, as fat as they are, seem to think that taking off their top while beaching themselves around the pool is attractive. I mean it would be if they were hot but only one girl out of the group around the pool was decent looking and of course she did not take of her top. Go figure. Given that there were tops coming off though – my two Thai girls, full of chilled white wine, decided that they also needed to take of their tops. Who was I to stop them. Competition is always good.

Second bottle of wine opened we were lounging around the pool, joking a bit and checking out the tits. A little Thai/Farang comparison shopping. I did have the camera handy but I cannot share those pics given we are a “family” site. I think the highlight of the evening was when one of the euro girls, think big-real big, was checking out my two Thai girls sunning their bosoms by the pool. She was looking so intently that the girls were getting a little uncomfortable so they decided to give her a show. One of the girls laid down on top of the other one and then gave each other a big long french kiss. Of course I was popping a boner and thinking about making a hasty retreat to the room but before I could react the euro girl gathered up her belongings and left the scene with a big look of disgust. Good. We cleared her out.

Then we gathered up our almost empty bottle and headed for some dinner. Over dinner we had another bottle – finished that up and went to the room. Basically everyone was buzzed but happy so we cranked up some tunes in the room and partied a bit. This of course led to some frolicking on the bed and an interesting issue sort of “popped” up. Whilst Protege’s friend was pleasuring me orally I happened to mention that she was pretty good at what she was doing – even had the guts to say that she was much better in this department than Protege. I would dare say she had Lolita like skills. In the normal world this might have caused quite a stir or at the very least might have ended the fun but this is the twilight zone and special circumstances apply.

The friend is a little older than Protege. There is about 12 years between them but generally this has made for a pretty good dynamic. In this case it made for a perfect teacher/student relationship with my Johnson being the example subject. I was sitting in a chair with both girls naked and kneeling on the floor. Think Lolitas. The older girl would go in and demonstrate proper technique, form and hand movements. I did my best not to come since the lesson would take some time. Once she was done Protege would go in with the other girl giving tips, in Thai, while also helping with the hand movements and giving proper mouth techniques. Basically I would acknowledge what was working well and what wasn’t. Then they would switch waiting for me to gesture as what technique was working the best so together they could fine tune their skills and bring Protege up a notch. It worked.

After 30 minutes or so of lessons I showed them my unanimous approval by coming all over their tits doing my heartfelt best to share the load evenly. I was tired after this and wanted to sleep. Problem was they had not really got what they wanted so they proceeded to 69 on the bed and well – we had fun. Drunk and exhausted we all crashed out. Ready for day 4 but not really ready for the morning of day 4.

We were up early mostly cause the sun was up and we were to bed fairly early anyway. The breakfast spread was off the hook and as usual I find myself eating too much but I will try to balance it as much as I can with some “exercise”. After grub we returned to the room for some well u know. I will just state that this is a complex arrangement. Now we are dealing with 3 sex drives and I am finding that between us someone is always looking to get some. My abs hurt. We had a plan to get to “town” since we wanted to grab a few things and the other girl needed to hit Western Union. Yes – she has a newly found sponsor helping her out. We got a free ride back into town at 10, hit the bank and then cruised around, checked email and waited for our return ride home. The car was packed for the way back so we had to sit in the back of the truck. Once I get some pics downloaded I will include some in the posts.Once we got back we checked the bed out in the room again and then hit the pool. The pool is amazing. On a cliff side overlooking the ocean. Once again, apart from the girls working at the resort, I was with the only Thai girls we have seen at the resort. On paper this is not an issue but these were also the only thin girls as well. The rest of the girls, beached whales, at the pool looked like someone needed to be employed just to turn them over from time to time to make sure they were not getting overcooked. The funny thing about this was not only were all the other guys looking at us but even the male staff at the resort were watching since there was honestly nothing else worth checking out. Nothing is sadder than watching a fairly fit white guy, sitting with wifecow at the pool, trying to catch glances of the Thai birds without getting caught. I do feel for them. I remember the first time I came to Asia with a pretty fit white girl, I still found myself sneaking a peek since one just can’t help themselves. Not sure what it is but the more time that goes by while living in Thailand the more some of the white girls are looking fatter and fatter to me. I am sitting by the pool writing and next to me is 2 European girls, overweight, gorging on a couple of ice cream sundaes. Nothing even remotely attractive about it.

We spent all day between the beach and the pool. Awesome. It is such a clean break from BKK but I could never live around these places but visiting often can’t be bad. However I do miss BKK as well. I think the differences are appealing and BKK is such a great city all in all. Being in either place helps me to appreciate what they both have on offer.

The Pool:

Party planning. Seems I am never a good planner when it comes to holidays in Thailand. The actual night of the Full Moon is March 3 but this happens to coincide with a big buddhist holiday so there won’t be any partying. March 4 will be the delayed Full Moon party but the moon won’t be full and we have to leave on the 5th. So we have been scrambling all day to line up a boat to the Haad rin beach area for tonight, the 2nd, since people are thinking that the 3rd will not have any partying and the 4th might be too late. Problem with this is that there seems to be a shortage of transportation and as usual, the Thais are taking full advantage of this. Everything is costing about twice what it normally does. This is one of the lame aspects of high season and Full Moon combined. I am here already and will pull it together but I hate spending top dollar for it all. The only solution I see is staying right near where Full Moon festivities are, but not a very relaxed holiday – or book private transportation earlier but I am not sure that would have worked. Our resort is amazing and far removed from all the madness but getting to and from Full Moon party area looks to be difficult or at the very least costly.

One a sidenote, The newspapers are a day behind here. Kind of cool. So I was reading Thursday’s paper on Friday. The headlines were about the Thai Finance Minister resigning. It made me think back to a year in California when the gas prices were so high that some less than middle class people were having trouble coping. One California Senator was quoted in the paper discussing the price of fuel and could not understand why everyone was complaining. Well it seems the price he was referring to was about 20 US cents cheaper than it really was at the pump. It was later acknowledged that he did not really know the price since he is driven everywhere and his own cars are filled up by someone who works for him. Meaning the normal world, the one he was making laws for, was not really affecting his life. As I looked at the picture of the Finance Minister getting into his fancy car with his driver it dawned on me that the very finance laws or rules he was setting, prior to resigning, were never going to affect him but for sure they would affect the normal Thais trying to make a living on Koh Phagnan and would affect how I would survive doing business in Thailand. Funny how the world works that way.

I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions since I am never able to declare one I can stick to but I do believe in Karma. My goal this year was to have a neutral Karma footprint at the very worst. Meaning I would do my best to curtail my negative Karma emissions. Not sure it is working given what happens next.

We took a nap and prepared for a night of partying. The boat was lined up at 9 pm to take us from our beach to a pier that we could walk from to check out pre-opening night for the Full Moon Party. So we hung by our beach, ate some seafood, drank wine and enjoyed people watching. The first glitch in the night appeared when the receptionist told us the water near our beach was too low and going to the beach party by boat was out of the question. Great. We finished up with dinner and headed to a truck that was going to drive us to the party over still more bumpy roads for close to an hour. Okay going but when drunk it will suck to come back this way. My reason for the boat was that I suspected it might be smoother and would make it easy if one needed to get sick along the way. However while in transit our driver got a call confirming we could meet at another nearby beach and take the boat all the way in. So we did.

Being the night before a full moon meant that the moon was almost full and the sky was lit up just the same. Taking a long tail boat late at night on mostly deserted waters was a treat. Apart from the noise of the motor things were mostly quiet and since we followed the coastline all the way we got great views for the entire trip. Was cool to see some areas with no people at all, some areas with only natives and some areas with hotel and resort development. Took about 45 minutes but we arrived in the haad rin area and walked to the beach area.

As I suspected it was basically a bunch of outdoor bars with huge speakers, some with outdoor seating and the ability to buy buckets of booze almost anywhere along the beach. Being that this was not the official night of Full Moon I have nothing to compare it to but it looked like it was not the normal madness. Comparing this to a few nights in Ibiza I would immediately declare that Ibiza is world class and tough to match. We cruised around, people watched(the whole point of going really), and sipped on our bucket of Smirnoff and Red Bull. We did find one nice place to sit and chill but after a while the music became lame so we moved to another area that was without chairs but was belting out some seriously good dance tunes. I was really hoping for this – some great music. We stayed for a good 2 hours or so, cruised through a few more buckets and chatted up those around us. Then the fun was spoiled but before I explain my stupidity let me make another point.

It is clear that a bunch of people come to Full Moon looking to get laid. U see boyfriends and girlfriends out to party but already knowing who they are going to be sleeping with. Then u see your standard white guy with his Thai girl – may be his girlfriend or may be a bar fine from Samui. Either way he brought his own in. Smart thinking. The rest of the groups were divided by either packs of boys with girls, packs of only girls and packs of only boys. The common theme among them is that apart from getting trashed they were hoping to get some but even though they had the I want to get some look in their eyes the was it was never going to happen. To be honest – I saw only a handful of cuties I would have even bothered wasting some of my precious holiday time pursuing. One of my ideas on this trip was to take Protege solo and see if we could pull a Farang but as u know already plans changed.

In summation it was bunches of drunk people chasing other drunk people in hopes that someone would score and the collective sigh of relief would exhale across the group. I bring all this up since I started to watch the people look at us when they walked by. If it was Farang girls they would shoot a glance of disgust across my bow but secretly I think they applauded me since we all could agree that at least I was getting some. Guys would walk by and try to sort out who I was with and decide which girl to hit on. Of course nether of the girls I was with gave anyone the time of day so that would fail. Other guys would acknowledge that the girls were both with me and just grin – little did they know it is tougher than it looks. The other behaviors came out only when we were separated. The girls would always go to the bathroom together which left me on the beach alone. Twice during one of these episodes I was getting glances from a white chick and was chatting her up in less than 5 minutes. Believe me folks, nothing to do with me, but these girls really want to get laid. They are on the their holiday for God’s sake. Who wants to return home from an international holiday without a few tales to tell?

Invariably every time I would return from the bathroom I would see a group of guys hanging around my 2 Thai girls hoping to land the motherlode. I would cruise up on them and resume my position of dancing the night way and then it would click that the girls were with me. Point is – a lot of frustrated single people looking to connect but from all appearances getting a lot less than the stories would have u to believe.

So there we were, drunk, and dancing on the beach under the full moon to some kicking tunes. Not amazing but fun none the less. The girls had left to go to the bathroom and I was watching our stuff. A group of people, who I assumed were Thai, crossed by me. 3 guys and 1 girl. They came very close and I remember standing over our stuff to make sure they would not walk on it. I never once  suspected they might be looking to take something. As they went by me one guy bumped me from the front and at the same time I could feel a hand going into my back pocket. I had actually stored all my stuff in a zippered pocket and knew no one could get it but of course I always keep my phone in my normal right front pocket since I am always texting people. So as I was protecting one pocket they grabbed for my phone but at the time I just did not feel it. Of course being full time pick pocketers I would assume they have some skills. Moments later as the group dispersed and I was checking to make sure they had not taken anything I realized my phone was gone. I was so pissed. At myself for letting it happen and at the inconvenience of it all. Honesty I would rather lose cash than my phone.

Now I needed to stop my phone, find all my numbers, and get a new SIM card. On top of all that I had also lost my little Sony memory key that I never leave home without. All just a big pain in the ass really and put me right out of my party mood.

I called DTAC and killed my SIM, Then we went hunting for some food. Comfort food. I got an amazing Chicken Schnitzel sandwich from a small street side restaurant. The people working there looked the same as the people who stole from me on the beach, not the same people, but the same look. I realized they were not from Thailand but spoke Thai. I asked him where he was from. He said Burma. But he quipped, “We are good Burmese but watch out for all the Burmese thieves.” Great. Now u tell me.

Turns out later as we chatted with our boat guys that Koh Phangnan has a serious problem with tons of Burmese people hiding on the island without legal status who resort to crime to get by. Supposedly on the actual nights of Full Moon parties the island tries to dispatch enough Thai Police to discourage the behavior but on off nights with full crowds the Burmese work in large groups to get what they can. As I recall we did not see any police at all during our time at the beach party. Live and learn.

We got back to our resort and finished the party in the room. Life ain’t half bad.

First off – the new airport. I am not quite sure what all the fuss is about other than I think people need something to bitch about. We grabbed a metered taxi right outside my apartment on Soi 4 and I think we made it door to door in about 35 minutes. About the same time or a little faster than going to the old airport. 250 including toll. Quick side note – if u are paying somewhere north of this for a non-metered taxi asshole to take u, just know u r getting ripped off. Plenty of meters around so don’t fret. When u first drive up on the new airport it looks amazing – reminds me of the HK or KL airport but even cooler since they combined some elements of the outdoors with the actual structure.

Grabbed a trolley and right into the Bangkok Airways check-in counter. Checked in within 10 minutes, through security and was in a dining area, with bathrooms, before 20 minutes had passed. I only bring up all these details to try and balance the world media attention that is constantly railing against Thailand and the new airport. Are there issues? Well I was not able to check the runway but I assume they found cracks that need to be fixed – but I trust that they will. Are there bathroom shortages? I did not see them as frequently as I am accustomed to in most airports but at the same time we did see them and used them when needed. However the girls(more on this later) said that each bathroom they went to always had a line so it seems there is not enough.

One thing I noticed about the bathrooms within the food court is that more space was wasted on design than on utilizing the space for toilets. No need to over engineer bathrooms given there purpose. There was one sit down toilet, 2 urinals and 3 sinks but there was a huge janitor closet even though outside the bathroom there was also a janitor closet. Just seems a simple case of poor design since there was no reason for 3 sinks and there was indeed space for more toilets. It seems once u are inside specific departure gates there are bathrooms so I think the overall shortage must be in the general areas. Design errors can be fixed but they take time, cost money and render some places unusable during renovations. I think the airport will be okay and eventually something Thailand will come to be proud of is my guess.

I used our trusty travel agent Will @ DTCtravel. We always use Will cause we trust him, we get what he promises and he is always available to take care of any issues. Will lined up the resort, planes and transit. I could have done it myself but I like the ease of one phone call and a few emails rather than tracking it all down myself. Will include more info on the transiting and resort as I go.

Life in Thailand can border on the bizarre almost to the point that it no longer seems to be strange at all. It is hard for me to decide exactly where to take the thesis of this trip report. I could make it simply a normal trip report, sprinkle in the coverage of the Full Moon Party and leave it at that but as I continue to write for the blog the more I find myself yearning to talk about politics, running businesses in Thailand and some of my own life experiences. I intend to try this technique with this series of posts.

I had considered going to Full Moon alone but I was told by a few friends that the chick action is quite low unless u are looking for white girls or the few Thai girls that show up around Full Moon – usually coming in from Koh Samui. I thought about it more and more and decided to take the Protege with me. This could be the first time I am mentioning her in this light. Some other posts have referred to her but not directly. I don’t intend to write about her but since she is a part of my current experiences then for sure I will be bringing her up a bit. I call her Protege cause I am not sure exactly how to classify her right now. We are not really boyfriend/girlfriend because I don’t want a girlfriend however I do care about her and am currently sponsoring her so to speak. I don’t mind sponsoring girls if I am getting what I want and they appear to be moving ahead in the world. Meaning – if u are bar fining, drinking, paying for freelancers or whatever – u r still paying for it. So I am not against the paying for it and I tend to find direct sponsoring to hit me less in the pocketbook than outright whoring. We all have our own math. Anyway – the Protege is a fun girl, pulled out of the scene before she was in it long(she is young), she does some nude modeling for extra cash, is learning English, is learning Japanese, pretty handy with a computer and likes girls as much as I do. Yes folks- she is a lesbian but as we have written about before, maybe cryptically, but as Mochalover has recently spelled out – this is not always easy in Bangkok.

I was first introduced to this when I came to my apartment one night to find her making out with a girl on my couch while watching porn on my tv, but to be fair it was her porn. She almost acted caught and was worried I would be upset. I tried to play it cool and even make her feel a little bit bad but how could I make a scene when her next suggestion was for all of us to shower up and hit the bed. We did. Amazing. I did not have sex with her friend that night but let’s just say all of us had a good time and the door was opened. There was a subsequent incident that stemmed from one of her friends coming over that actually ended up with only me having sex, with her friend, but with her go ahead. Not exactly a threesome but u won’t hear me bitching.

This behavior started a routine on Thursday nights that we nicknamed 3some Thursdays. The goal was to hit the go go bars and look for girls she liked and take them home. Easier said than done. We would get girls to sit with us, drink with us but they would make it clear that if we took her home it would not really be a 3some. No fun there. Long story short. The first night out we did find one from a bar in Soi Cowboy but Protege got too drunk and the deal was never closed. We tried again the next week and ended up with the same girl as before but late in the night she admitted that a full on 3some was a little much for her. Some people have commented on the blogs that u can find 2 girls into each other, which I agree with, but I think in the situation where u already have your one girl and are just looking for the 3rd wheel – it is not as easy as one thinks.

Well a few days before we were to head out for the Full Moon trip we had a little house party at home. During this party Protege brought a friend over who happened to be from a go go bar, was not super hot per say, but was willing and eager to have some 3some action. So we did. And for the next 2 nights after we repeated the incident to double check its authenticity. Then we decided to take her with us so that we would spice up the holiday a bit. So this trip is turning out to be a little different given there are 2 chicks with me. I keep getting funny looks at the airport and around Koh Phangan but I think mostly it is because the girls look good and appear to be into each other more than me, I can deal with it.

From BKK we took BKK Airways to Koh Samui. Plane was somewhat late which could be related to no gates at the BKK airport and having to bus to the plane. Oh well. The stewardesses are all pretty hot though and the in flight snack was more than decent. Samui is fun to land in because the terminal is small and outdoors which means while u are waiting for your bags you are quite close to the runway and get amazing views of the planes taking off and landing. Good fun. We were picked up by the resort and taken to the boat pier. Then grabbed a boat to Koh Phangan. This took about 45 minutes and was at dusk so it was awesome views all around. The boat was full of basically a transplanted group of Kao San road groupies looking for the next party. Not really my scene but I was interested in the whole affair and a few days away from BKK. BTW – there were no Thai girls on the boat except for the 2 I brought and we all struggled to see one semi-hot white girl. Let’s just say most of them were a tad overweight. Needless to say we were getting all the looks. I am sure it is my amazing fashion sense that was bringing it on.

Boat arrived and then we got in a four wheel drive pickup for a ride across the island on a bad road to the Panviman Resort. The road sucked but I will take that if it means getting to a quieter side of the island. I was not sure exactly where Full Moon party area was but I figured we would sort it later since I had no intention of staying near it but just wanted to go experience it one night. We got to the resort way after dark but could see that the place was ideally located on a nice beach and the resort layout was incredible. Of course I had to explain the checking in with 2 girls and that an extra bed really was not needed but them are the breaks.

We had a nice seafood dinner, bottle of wine and sat on the beach to finish the bottle. I felt a million miles away from Bkk which is what I wanted. There was not place to party or hang out so after we finished the bottle we took ourselves accompanied by our buzzes to the room. The girls had bought some outfits in BKK that they wanted to model and who was I to stop them.